Product Description

This hilarious, crowd-pleasing hit scores big laughs with funnyman Bernie Mac (BAD SANTA, OCEAN'S 11) and Academy Award(R) nominee Angela Bassett (Best Actress, WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT, 1993). The day he got his 3,000th big league hit, Stan Ross (Mac) walked away from the game believing he'd punched his ticket to the Hall of Fame. But 10 years later, Stan becomes baseball's biggest error when it's discovered that three of his hits don't count! Now this over-the-hill former star with an oversized ego decides to make the major league's most outrageous comeback in order to regain his claim to fame! Also featuring Chris Noth (TV's SEX AND THE CITY, CAST AWAY) and Paul Sorvino (THE COOLER, GOODFELLAS) ... catch the laugh-packed comedy that's been a home run with audiences everywhere!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21520 in DVD
• Brand: Disney
• Released on: 2005-02-01
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Spanish, French
• Dubbed in: French
• Running time: 104 minutes

Amazon.com
Bernie Mac is perfectly cast in Mr. 3000, a feel-good baseball comedy that capitalizes on Mac's established comedy persona. He plays Stan Ross, veteran first-baseman for the struggling Milwaukee Brewers, who quit the team during a pennant race and, nine years later, discovers that he's actually three hits short of his 3,000 career-hit claim to fame. When he attempts a comeback to correct his record, his selfish past returns to haunt him, along with a former flame (Angela Bassett, who deserves better roles) who's covering Stan's return to baseball for ESPN. It's strictly formula, but the comedy is consistently entertaining, and director Charles Stone III proves that his 2002 sleeper hit Drumline was no fluke, injecting observant details into a very predictable plotline. Easily recommended, Mr. 3000 makes a good double-header with 1989's hit baseball comedy Major League. --Jeff Shannon

From The New Yorker
Years in development, this fuzzy baseball story about a conceited player (Bernie Mac) who comes out of retirement to fix his record (he's three hits short of the magic three thousand) is a major letdown. Mac, in his first Hollywood lead, doesn't display his usual edge-he gives a neat, love-me performance. It's a shame, because there's a nasty, clever film about baseball hidden underneath the movie's gauzy camaraderie. With a large and able cast (Angela Bassett, Chris Noth, and Paul Sorvino, among others) who have been left stranded. -Bruce Diones
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Ebert & Roeper
"Two thumbs up!"

Customer Reviews

Light Comedy with a Little Bite from Bernie Mac.
"Mr. 3000" is a sports comedy with a virtuous message that will satisfy light entertainment cravings. Stan Ross (Bernie Mac) is a former Milwaukee Brewer who retired from baseball as soon as he had achieved a career 3000 hits, guaranteeing him a place in the record books and a slew of endorsement deals. His teammates hated him. The press attacked him. But egotistical, self-obsessed Stan didn't care as long as he had 3000 hits and a shot at the Baseball Hall of Fame. 9 years later, when he is finally being seriously considered for entry into the Hall of Fame, a computational error that caused 3 of his hits to be counted twice is discovered. Stan only made 2997 hits! So he decides to return to baseball, at the age of 47, to get those 3 hits back. He finds that a lot of things have changed since he left the game. But his former love, sports journalist Maureen Simmons (Angela Bassett), is covering his story again. And the team's young, cocky, selfish, star player (Brian White) reminds Stan of himself.

Bernie Mac injects a little bite into this otherwise feel-good comedy. Stan Ross is obnoxious, but Mac makes him a basically lovable jerk. If you don't like Bernie Mac's persona, however, you won't like this. Stan is overbearing, but "Mr. 3000" is ultimately a sweet film about self-sacrifice with the occasional off-color comment to remind us that we are talking about professional athletes here. It's a fun movie if you're looking for something light.

The DVD: Bonus features include 3 featurettes, 3 extended sequences, 3 deleted scenes with optional director's commentary, outtakes (3 minutes), and an audio commentary by director Charles Stone III. "The Making of Mr. 3000" (15 minutes) features interviews with producer Maggie White, director Charles Stone, the principle cast, and the film's baseball advisor and baseball coordinator. Stone discusses his intentions and the sports shows featured in the film. The cast talk about their experiences with baseball and with training for the film. "Spring Training: The Extras' Journey" (10 minutes) follows the process of finding the extras to play baseball roles, some of whom were talented players drafted by pro teams in the past. Includes interviews with some of the extras. "Everybody Loves Stan" (3 1/2 minutes) is a sort of mock media production about the Stan Ross character using footage from the movie and a few soundbites from former pro baseball players. Charles Stone does a nice director's commentary that addresses technical, character, narrative, and thematic aspects of the film, clearly and coherently. Subtitles for the film are available in French and Spanish. Captioning is in English. And dubbing is available in French.

Bernie Mack wasted again ....
Bernie Mack is such an explosively funny comedian (The Bernie Mack Show, Kings of Comedy, Ocean's 11), it makes me hope that he fires his agent so he won't make any more films like Mr. 3000. This Bernie Mack film is so bad, it not only wastes Mack's talents, but also those of Angela Bassett (from What's Love Got to Do With It to this ... ugh!) and Paul Sorvino as well. It's yet another one of those hackneyed sports movies where a talented, but selfish athlete finds redemption and becomes a team player at the end. You know the drill: he's cocky, but he's all alone because he's a jerk, he doesn't appreciate the woman who loves him, he finds salvation at the end, rallies the team to a big winning streak, blah, blah, blah, blah .... The film tries to be heartwarming and inspiring, but, in the end, all the false emotional minipulation does is take away Mack's edge, leaving an unfunny and jumbled mess.

Unfortunately, Bernie Mack is traveling down the same film road that Richard Pryor did. Namely, instead of using Mack's natural edginess and sharp humor to create a truly interesting, if negative, character, Mr. 3000 tries to make him softer and more sympathetic to make him palatable to mainstream audiences. The problem is that that isn't what Bernie Mack is all about. Look at Mack's performance in Kings of Comedy -- brash, very un-p.c. and very, very funny -- and contrast it with the soft, shapeless character he plays in 3000. The film doesn't have the guts to let Mack be purely nasty. And since the screenwriters didn't have the talent to believably show Mack's transformation from heel to hero, the result is a wishy-washy mess that smacks of phony emotion and manipulation. The producers should have just turned Mr. 3000 into a purely negative character a la Billy Bob Thornton in Mack's much better comedy Bad Santa and gone for the jugular instead of sanding off his rough edges and trying to get the audience to buy it.

A beautiful story about a selfish man who grows up a little
Call me a sap if you like, but I think MR. 3000 tells a beautiful story. Predictable? Maybe. Cliched? Possibly. And yet, it's so well-written and directed, so vividly acted, and so attentive to characters rather than to attending to carrying out a sports-movie formula, that I never FELT that the movie was musty or cliched. The whole thing feels fresh. It's also funny and, in the end, rather touching.

MR. 3000 is basically about a selfish man's comeuppance. After getting his 3000th hit, Stan Ross (Bernie Mac) decides to rest on his laurels and retire from baseball---even as his team, the Milwaukee Brewers, is in the midst of playoff contention. Nine years later, Ross finds out that he didn't have his 3000 hits after all; a counting error caused a few hits to count more than once, and he really had only 2997 when he retired. His pride having taken a beating, he decides to return to baseball to get his final three hits...and, in the process, grows up a little from the selfish man he was in the past.

It's a plot that doesn't sound all that fresh on paper. But there's no anticipating the depth that the screenwriters, director Charles Stone III, and Bernie Mac bring to the character of Stan Ross. Ross could have been made into a caricature of arrogance, a painfully funny stick figure of a character off of whom easy satirical points could have been scored. But the Ross of MR. 3000 is disarmingly likable in spite of his (hilarious) flaws, because you realize that, despite his me-first nature, he really does love the game of baseball, and understands how it works. It is with this understanding that he becomes a mentor of sorts to the new Brewers team he joins: a group of self-satisfied, self-absorbed players who seem to care little about the game itself (and their indifference is reflected in their cellar-dwelling status in their league). In one scene, Ross sees a faintly disturbing reflection of his old self in T-Rex (Brian J. White), and, as T-Rex is about to get into his car, Ross stops him and advises him on the virtues of becoming a forceful team leader, one who can encourage the highest level of play from the team. Ross has clearly seen enough to know what makes for a winning team, and that is what makes Ross an admirable character regardless of his inflated ego.

But, of course, at that point of the movie, you might be thinking that he's being a little hypocritical, telling a teammate to act like a team leader when he himself hasn't shown a great deal of similar unselfish attributes. It is precisely that kind of character complexity and nuance that makes MR. 3000 stand out from the usual standard sports-movie ilk, with its comic caricatures and by-the-numbers plots. The film doesn't take a mechanical approach to Stan Ross' change of heart. When Hit No. 3000 looms on the horizon for him, Ross decides to call for an extra team practice...only to blow it off himself in order to appear on Jay Leno. He still can't resist the lure of his own ego, even as he selflessly inspires his team to try to at least go down fighting.

Stan Ross is a character that has been sensitively written by its three credited writers (Eric Champnella, Keith Mitchell, and Howard Michael Gould), but of course it's up to the actor to bring a character to life, and Bernie Mac comes through with a performance that is better than anyone had a right to expect from a man whose first leading role this is. Whereas another actor might have gone for psychological depth in portraying Ross' selfishness, Mac makes it light and funny. But Mac does achieve some real moments of emotional gravitas, moments in which one can sense, looking at Mac's expressive face at certain moments, that Ross' anxiety and fear about losing his hard-fought legacy loom in his head. It's a charming, beautifully-shaded, marvelous performance, and for all the hype Jamie Foxx garnered for his Ray Charles interpretation in RAY, Bernie Mac's may actually be superior in its emotional impact. Seriously.

Director Charles Stone III keeps everything light, fresh and above all honest; this movie, which could easily have given into Hollywood-style bathos, never becomes overly sentimental with its change-of-heart story. Instead, it is emotionally convincing every step of the way. Stone---as well as the script, of course---also shows an awareness of the realities of the game of baseball today: how pro athletes can sometimes be less than serious about the game they're playing, how baseball owners can sometimes be concerned only about drawing in crowds, how sensitive media members can be when a player treats them less than respectfully, etc. You can see how a focused player like Stan Ross could be considered a refreshing and even uplifting presence in the midst of such cynicism. Thankfully, the movie itself never becomes merely cynical: even as it takes some sharp jabs at baseball as it is run today, there is always that faint recognition of truth that makes for an enriching movie.

By the end of MR. 3000, the movie inevitably comes down to a last-ditch effort in the bottom of the 9th inning in a tie game. And eventually Stan Ross gets redemption---but not the kind of redemption he necessarily expects. It's perhaps not as surprising an ending as the filmmakers clearly want it to be; still, it is a beautifully fitting ending, one that puts a capper on a surprisingly better-than-average sports movie. Call me sentimental, but I found MR. 3000 touching. Recommended.